I've Missed You, Pretty Bird
by Taw2541
Summary: Oliver and Laurel come face to face with the Earth 2 version of Oliver Queen. Spoilers for those who have not seen Season 8 yet.


**For those who have not watched Season 8 do not read this any further. Although I've regularly stopped watching Arrow since Season 4, I do still read about it from time to time and watch video clips. See while I intend to binge-watch the final season since it's heavily related to this year's Crossover and cause it's a final season to a show I used to love. But because of the internet, avoiding spoilers is next to impossible. Anyway, my knowledge of Season 8 ends with 8x03 so anything else I have not seen; also don't mention it to me in reviews or private messages.**

* * *

Laurel could not believe what she was seeing, she dreamed of this moment so many times after he died but she knew it would never happen; it was Oliver, her Oliver, alive and in front of her. Next to her, staring in bewilderment, was her Oliver's doppelganger from Earth 1, a hero known as the Green Arrow. Oliver was shocked to see his doppelganger, he had longer hair than him like when was stranded for five years but less messy and styled. He had a beard filled with stumble just like him though but he looked like he was starting to develop a goatee, but the biggest difference was that this doppelganger of his was wheelchair-bound having used a remote-controlled wheelchair to move around.

"Oliver? Ollie? Your ... you're alive." Laurel said a mixture of grief and joy, walking towards him. "Are you ... are really my Ollie?"

"I don't know about being your Oliver anymore but yeah, yeah I'm him. The same guy that kissed you goodbye on the docks when I got on the Gambit, the same guy that pissed off his parents for dating a "bad girl" like you. Who drove with you to the cemetery, whenever you felt like you were missing your dad." Earth 2 Oliver explained.

"Ollie." She cried approaching him but he then backed away with his chair. "Ollie, what's wrong?"

"Laurel ... Laurel as good as it is to see you again, I wish things were different, that you were still the same girl I knew." He replied.

"What ... what does that mean?" She asked although a part of her knew why and dreaded the fact Oliver knew.

"It means I know what you did, what you've done in Central City with Zoom. And ... and right now I'm having a hard time looking at you." He explained.

"Ollie." She said with pain in her voice at Oliver's words.

Oliver then turned his attention from his ex-girlfriend to his doppelganger from Earth 1. "Is this as weird for you as it is for me?" He asked humorously.

"Definitely." Oliver from Earth 1 replied, still bewildered. "Though as far as doppelgangers go, I think I like you better than the last one I met."

"Why? What was wrong with him?" Oliver from Earth 2 curiously asked.

"He was a Nazi fascist that I had to kill." Earth 1 Oliver answered.

"Well I'm not a Nazi but here's hoping you won't have to kill me." Earth 2 Oliver said with a cocky smirk. "Come there's something you need to see. Both of you." He said taking a familiar look to Laurel that Oliver recognized in himself, as he rolled away with both of them following behind.

* * *

Eventually, Earth 2 Oliver showed his doppelganger and Laurel what was in the other room; survivors from Earth 2 that he had managed to transport to Earth 1 just before Earth 2's destruction from the Anti-Matter wave. Demanding to know how and why there were survivors and how he was still alive, Oliver recounted his history to Laurel out of respect for what they used to be and to satisfy his doppelganger's curiosity. Some of the facts were familiar to Earth 1 Oliver and some weren't. Like his doppelganger, Oliver went on a cruise ship with his father on the Queen's Gambit; although it was apparently a business trip for him as he wasn't cheating with Laurel's sister, which Earth 1 Oliver still hated himself for sometimes. When the Gambit went down, he was presumed dead but was instead captured on the AMAZO by Anthony Ivo. Ivo proceeded to torture him in order to study the effects of Mirakuru like his Earth 1 counterpart, however, Ivo's torture on Oliver had severe consequences on Oliver's body; the reason that Oliver was bound to a wheelchair is that Ivo's torture had caused severe nerve damage throughout his body specifically in his legs, while he could still walk it was extremely painful for him to do so as he was in frequent pain every day.

After the Mirakuru was destroyed and Oliver escaped Ivo, the exact details Oliver asked not to be pressed on; an obvious sore spot for him. Again, like his counterpart, Oliver was discovered by Amanda Waller and "recruited" to work for ARGUS. Unlike his Earth 1 counterpart, Oliver was trained as a weapons designer; Oliver was actually surprised that his counterpart didn't have a degree in Engineering or a degree of any kind. While Earth 1 Oliver had some talent for engineering that he used from time-to-time, his Earth 2 doppelganger had engineering skills that could rival Cisco's and would definitely impress Felicity he thought. While working for ARGUS, Oliver eventually earned Amanda's "trust" and she told him the truth. That there were multiple parallel universes and the time was drawing near that an event would potentially destroy their Earth and everyone on it. After some convincing and evidence provided by Waller, Oliver eventually decided to continue to help her stay in ARGUS even if it meant staying dead to his friends and family.

Oliver spent years working with some of the most brilliant people Waller had under her thumb until they realized there was no solution to save them when they did not know the method of annihilation and thus could not develop a countermeasure. However, while ARGUS was observing the evil speedster, Zoom, they had discovered it was possible to travel to other Earths; studying the dimensional breaches they were able to reverse engineer the method. It was around that time that Oliver found up what Laurel was doing in Central City as Black Siren. When the Anti-Matter wave hit Earth 2, ARGUS's plan was immediately activated as a satellite program opened dimensional breaches to Earth 1; 5.2 billion people were on Earth 2 at the time of its destruction and approximately 2.6 million people were transported to Earth 1 to which Oliver said solemnly and mournfully.

* * *

As Oliver of Earth 1 and Laurel worked with his doppelganger during the Crisis, he had a hard time watching and trying to ignore Oliver's off-hand and cold comments to Laurel but worst of all was the way his doppelganger looked at her; a look he saw in himself all too much. It was hard for Oliver to watch Laurel being insulted by his counterpart, granted he didn't say anything untrue and anything that Oliver himself did not say to Laurel himself in one manner or another but still. Oliver had a complicated relationship with Laurel for so many reasons, but the main reason was that she was not his Laurel. Earth 2 Oliver then rolled out of the room, and Oliver followed.

"Hey! Hey!" Earth 1 Oliver yelled at his doppelganger.

"You know I'm not in the mood to talk to myself, pun intended." Earth 2 Oliver joked.

"Well you're going too, otherwise you'll lose the chair." Earth 1 Oliver replied and his double rolled his chair around to gaze into his own eyes.

"What is it?" Earth 2 Oliver asked.

"Don't you think you're being a little a harsh with Laurel considering everything we have to do at the moment." Earth 1 Oliver stated.

"Which is why I'm working with her, but I'm not going to pretend I'm okay with someone like her; I didn't make it easy for Waller I won't make it easy for her." Earth 2 Oliver answered.

"Fair enough, but then maybe you should stop looking at her the way you do." Earth 1 Oliver told him.

"What do you mean the way I'm looking at her?" Earth 2 Oliver asked perplexed.

Sighing deeply, Oliver walked to his wheelchair-bound doppelganger. "You ... you look at your Laurel the same way that I looked at mine, with love. When I looked at my Laurel, there were ... there were so many complicated expressions on my face but underneath those complicated feelings ... was love. You're still in love with her, aren't you?" Earth 1 Oliver summarized.

"Even if ... even if I was, what's it to you. You know what she's done." Earth 2 Oliver said reluctantly.

"Oh, believe me, I do. She didn't just kill people on your Earth." Earth 1 Oliver responded.

"Then how can you defend her!" Earth 2 Oliver yelled.

"I'm not! But she's trying, she's trying to do better and you know what; she is." Earth 1 Oliver told him. "I know, I know it doesn't change everything that she did but still you should give her a second chance. If you still love her then give her another chance."

"Why are you so interested in playing Cupid for me and my ex? Earth 2 Oliver asked while his doppelganger started to walk away.

"On my Earth, my Laurel ... my Laurel is dead, she was murdered." Oliver reluctantly explained. "We ... we broke up a long time ago before she died. Eventually, I moved on, found someone else. But in the end, Laurel still loved me ... even told me just before the end; even though I hurt her and her family so much. I love my wife, I love our kids more than anything. But I'd ... I'd be lying if I said I didn't think about Laurel and what kind of life we could've had if we had done things a little differently ... if I had done things differently."

"I'm ... I'm sorry." Earth 2 Oliver said expressing sympathy.

"Look whatever reasons you have against Laurel ... your Laurel, throw them away because if you still love her and I know you do then don't fight it like did. I think there should be at least one version of me and Laurel that made it work in the end. Because if there was any woman I know I could have really spent the rest of my life with other than Felicity Smoak, it was Dinah Laurel Lance." Earth 1 Oliver demanded of his doppelganger before leaving him to contemplate his words.

* * *

Laurel was working out on the salmon ladder, as Laurel got to the top she noticed Oliver walking or rather rolling in to see her. "Never saw you do this workout." Earth 2 Oliver exclaimed, he always got turned on watching Laurel exercise.

"Something I picked up over the years," Laurel explained as she dropped to the floor. "Can I help you with something?"

"No, I ... I just needed a moment to myself." He said.

"I'll leave you be then," She said grabbing her Black Canary jacket as she then walked passed him.

"Laurel wait!" He yelled, causing her to stop and turn around to meet him. "I'm ... I've been a real dick to you lately."

"Yeah, you have. Then again you've always been kind of a dick Ollie, something that you and your doppelganger share actually. But it's not like you didn't say anything untrue or anything I didn't deserve." She said with a hint of sadness and disgust.

"Look, Laurel when I ... when I found out those things about you I ... I had a hard time reconciling with the monster I read about being the woman that I loved. I guess, I dealt with it by believing that she just died somewhere along the way." He reluctantly explained.

"She did, in a way. Ollie when I lost you, the only man I've ever really loved. I was broken and I made a lot of bad decisions, with those decisions causing me to sink into darkness. But it wasn't until I met Zoom that I really started to become a monster. Working with a psychopath like him with so much anger, who had the power to kill everyone in a room in less than a second did something to me. At first, it was because I was afraid of him, so much that I started to fear any man that was even remotely like him. But ultimately, I kept working with him because I wanted to a monster; because monsters don't get their hearts broken when life takes things away from them, because they can take things from life instead." She explained as she reflected on her violent past. Laurel then walked closer to Oliver. "But Oliver, when I was Earth 1, I meet people who made me want to do better, be better than the person I was before. To at least try to make up for everything I did as Black Siren, as the Black Canary." She stated.

"And I should at least be willing to give you the chance to do that, especially considering everything that we had between us." He admitted. "Besides, it's not like ... It's not like I'm completely innocent either." He admitted.

"Ollie."

"I did things, awful things in order to survive. Worst of all I made you and my family think I was still dead for years, even ... even after Thea overdosed. And, I might have saved millions of lives on our Earth but ... but I let billions of others die." He said in horror.

"You just said it yourself, you saved millions, Ollie." She reminded him.

"Yeah, but I had to choose who to save. I chose who lives and who dies, how ... how does that not make me a monster?" He tearfully asked.

"The kind of monster perfect for me maybe?" She blurted out without thinking as he looked at her surprised. "Sorry, I didn't mean. I don't even know if you're seeing anyone."

"Look, you and I definitely have a lot to talk about if we managed to survive this. But there are only two things that I can think about that need to be made clear. The first is that your sister and her kid are alive." He stated.

"What?" She asked, secretly overjoyed at this revelation.

"I tried to save our families ... but I could only save yours. She's out there, somewhere on Earth 1, along with over 2 million people who have no idea what the hell just happened to them. When this over, we need to find them and try to give them a home." He answered.

"And the second thing?" She asked.

"I'm not seeing anyone." He said with a sly grin. "Not gonna lie, there were a few women over the years but in end ... in the end, they just weren't you." Pausing for a moment, Laurel then kneeled down and kissed Oliver with a passion from being apart from each other for twelve years. After several moments, the kissing slowly died down for Laurel to speak.

"One last question." She said.

"Sure."

"I don't really care but ... this nerve damage that you have, does it affect "certain" parts of you." She said with a smirk and a seductive tone.

"Later on, how about you and I find out." He suggested with a smile as his hand gently grabbed her chin. "I've missed you, I've missed so much ... pretty bird."

* * *

**Author's Notes: So I was very surprised that Earth 2 was destroyed when I read about it, I wrote this for them as I hope there are survivors like Jessie and Harry Wells from the Flash. Anyway in the New 52 series, Future's End, survivors from Earth 2 came to the main Earth looking for aid and a new home. The Green Arrow of that story was a passionate vocal advocate and defender for them in that story, even created a new home for them on Lian Yu. If they did do a story similar to this, I could see Laurel working to protect and create homes for the survivors of her dead world.**

**I had to be different when creating this Earth 2 Oliver because I don't want to simply become the Green Arrow like his Earth 1 self. Inspiration for him was taken from alternate versions of Green Arrow. His status as a borderline paraplegic was taken from an Oliver who lost his eye, his legs, and an arm in one version. His skills as an engineer and weapon designer come from the Flashpoint Green Arrow, who was basically like Tony Stark before he became Iron Man.**

**This story was inspired by a speculative fan on Arrow, who suggested that maybe Earth 2 Oliver could still be alive. If that was possible, it would be a nice consolation prize to see a Laurel and Oliver end up together; so why not give to the Earth 2 versions of their characters.**


End file.
